Ive researched a lot, but havent found the exact answer..
When its time to harvest honey, you take out the frames from the supers... do you take those frames, go extract the honey and put the same frames back in? Or do you put new frames in?
I assume you want to replace with drawn comb frames.. but starting out i dont have any...
It is your choice how you do it. There is no wrong answer.
First year or two, the way you describe is best. Later, you can switch to new frames after you have learned to care for drawn comb when it's not on the hive. It can be destroyed many ways when in storage.
Quote from: iddee on January 05, 2017, 05:27:12 PM
First year or two, the way you describe is best. Later, you can switch to new frames after you have learned to care for drawn comb when it's not on the hive. It can be destroyed many ways when in storage.
Go ahead, explain please... whats the best way to store it?
If it's winter and cold you can leave them out under a shed. Ants may get in them though. If I had bees that didn't have a lot of comb, or if you was wanting to make more honey, I'd put them back in there. In my yard I do it right before dark, otherwise robbing will start.
I'm fairly new at this and didn't have a lot of drawn comb. It adds up quick though. This year a couple of hives made me some honey, so after I extracted a full super, I put the whole thing back on. Earlier in the season, they cleaned and filled the frames back up. Later in the season, I removed the super, extracted and put it back on the hive for maybe 2-3 days. They took the rest of the honey and repaired the comb. I removed the super and they're now stacked, tightly covered top and bottom, in an unused bedroom which has no source of heat.
Another guy I know just stacks his in his shop. Mind you, we're in MT so it gets cold over winter and everything stays frozen. Some people put those moth balls in their stored supers, but I'm not into that at all. But I also don't have to deal with 1000s of supers. lol You just have to play around with what you may like and think will work. Like you said you've found, there's no exact answer. I love that about beekeeping. :)
You spray them with Bacillus thuringiensis (Xentari)